Abstract
The purpose of this comment is to take a different tack than Todd Lowry has chosen. He has primarily focused on the positive aspects of Greek economic thought in order to emphasize the continuities between the present and the past. I wish to emphasize the normative aspects of ancient economic thought with only occasional glances at modern “positive” economics. The concerns of classical political philosophy are distinctively different and challenging to the more mechanical models of modern economics or the alleged value-free individualism of modern welfare economics. Not only is it different but I believe the approach of classical political philosophy is also correct. It provides a more adequate understanding of human nature and the social arrangements appropriate to such a nature.
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References
Irving Kristol, “Utopianism, Ancient and Modern. ” In Two Cheers for Capitalism. New York: Basic Books, 1978, pp. 153–170, is a healthy antidote to the usual blueprint Utopian interpretation of Plato. The similarities between modern “realism” and the ancient Sophists needs to be further developed. The attack on Convention (nomos), and the laws made by the weak, in the name of Nature (physis), the right of the strong to have more, characterizes the teachings of the Sophists, and Athenian statesmen in the age of Pericles. On the appearance of the “common good unjustly understood,” see Leo Strauss’ account of the Melian dialogue in Thucydides and its relationship to Callicles, Thrasymachus, and Pericles, The City and Man. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1964, p. 193.
For a more extended treatment of these themes, cf. William F. Campbell, “Towards a Conservative Economics. ” Modern Age 26(1): Winter 1982, 27–38; and “Political Economy: New, Old, and Ancient. ” Intercollegiate Review 12(2): Winter 1976–77, 67–79.
Quoted in Joseph J. Spengler, Origins of Economic Thought and Justice. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980, p. 110.
Hans Baron, “Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth as Factors in the Rise of Humanistic Thought.” Speculum 13(1): January, 1938, 25. Sombart expressed the same view and claimed that Xenophon was “more widely read and more highly esteemed than Aristotle.” Werner Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1915, p. 226.
Xenophon, The Whole Works. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1849, p. 520.
(Pseudo-) Aristotle, Oeconomica Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962, 1:6:3– 4, p. 341. Leonardo Bruni translated Book I and Book III of the (Pseudo-) Aristotelian Economics into Latin from the Greek. This work, thought to be by Aristotle, is probably by an early Peripatetic student of Aristotle, possibly Theophrastus. Book I and Book III drew heavily from Xenophon and Aristotle. Although a great deal of scholarly work has gone into the tracing of translations, not much attention has been given to the substance of the economic thought. There is a movement in economics from the paradigm of virtue to the pardigm of control which parallels the similar “profanation of politics” described so well by Irving Kristol in his examination of the movement from the (Pseudo-) Aristotlian Secretum Secretorum to Machiavelli. Irving Kristol, “Machiavelli and the Profanation of Politics. ” In Reflections of a Neoconservative New York: Basic Books, 1983, pp. 123-135. Secretorum to Machiavelli. Irving Kristol, “Machiavelli and the Profanation of Politics. ” In Reflections of a Neoconservative New York: Basic Books, 1983, pp. 123-135.
Karl Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies Ed. George Dalton. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1968, p. 113. In addition to the sources cited in Lowry, the most extensive recent treatment of Aristotle’s “art of acquisition” is in Warren R. Brown’s “Aristotle’s Art of Acquisition and the Conquest of Nature. ” Interpretation 10 (2-3): 1982, 159-195.
Luke 10:41–41. Also cf. Thomas J. Lewis, “Acquisition and Anxiety: Aristotle’s Case Against the Market. ” Canadian Journal of Economics 11(1):1978.
Kurt Singer, “Oikonomia: An Inquiry into the Beginnings of Economic Thought and Language. ” Kyklos 11: 1958.
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Campbell, W.F. (1987). The Old Art of Political Economy. In: Todd Lowry, S. (eds) Pre-Classical Economic Thought. Recent Economic Thought Series, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3255-5_3
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